Plus, why healthy habits require a whole-family approach.
You have an extensive background in obesity research and weight-loss treatments, but what inspired you to focus on the family unit in Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids?
We have a golden opportunity to help the next generation and ensure they don’t have a lifelong struggle with their health and weight.
Our research at the University of Sydney confirms it all starts in the family home: your children will learn from what you do and eat.
With the endless demands of modern life, mealtimes can feel like yet another repetitive chore to get through, but I'll give it to you straight: you wouldn’t light up a cigarette in your child’s mouth, and you wouldn’t let your child drink a can of beer, because you know the damage that this does to them.
Breaking out of lifelong food habits is hard, which is why so many people don’t. But with the information provided in this book, you will be armed with tools to make the necessary changes and ensure your children don’t have lifelong struggles with their health and weight.
What are the six essential steps to wellness that you cover in Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids?
The whole-family approach is based on six key principles, which address fundamentals of nutrition, physical activity and sleep:
- Health, not weight: modelling healthy habits to ensure your child has a naturally-optimum body weight throughout their life.
- Reach for nature first: reduce fussy eating by exposing children to ‘nature’s treats’ and avoid the pitfalls of our modern diet.
- The full rainbow: get your child to eat more nutritious foods with a focus on variety.
- Mealtime, feelin’ fine: get the whole family involved in mealtimes and improve their innate appetite regulation by slowing down and eating together at the dining table.
- Play every day: understand your child’s exercise needs at each stage of their development and learn how to incorporate movement and a sense of play into your family’s daily lifestyle.
- Screen time showdown: model healthy tech habits, such as knowing when to turn off technology and establishing practical boundaries and positive alternatives that bring the family together.
Managing technology use is a significant challenge for modern parents. How does your book guide families in setting practical boundaries around technology?
Understanding the impacts of screen time is just as important for your child’s lifelong health as food choices and physical inactivity. This is because screens are the last thing we are using before we go to bed. These devices emit blue light which suppresses melatonin production in the brain, telling your child’s brain it’s daytime instead of nighttime. They then have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. Consequently, they wake up feeling sleep-deprived. But worse still, the poor sleep results in an increase in the hunger hormone, ghrelin, making them hungrier and craving high sugar, processed foods from the minute they wake up.
One example of setting boundaries around technology in the book is regarding screen usage at night. In this example, the book guides parents through how to carve out time before bed when all screens are turned off. This is easier to implement with younger children, but if you have older children, the approach is different. It is important to discuss with them the issues associated with evening screen time and create a plan together, so just like the food example discussed above, they feel in control of their choices.
Sleep is often an overlooked aspect of health. What are some key strategies from the book that parents can use to improve sleep for themselves and their kids?
Sleep is just as important as diet and physical activity, but it is often overlooked and neglected.
The book is full of practical strategies to help improve sleep health. But one of the most important is setting up the process for how parents engage with and absorb their own screen activity.
Set a rule for yourself that carves out moments in the day when your phone is left in another room. The discipline starts with you. It means no more scrolling on your phone when you are cooking dinner, or at the dinner table, or watching your child in the bath or even during playtime. Little kids are particularly malleable when it comes to role modelling, but both small children and older kids benefit when you put down your phone and fully engage with them.
How does the book help families reconnect with healthy eating (and each other) at the dinner table?
There is no debating the endless demands of modern life, particularly if you have young kids who are shattered at the end of the day. It’s much quicker and easier to grab a microwave meal or takeaway and scoff it down while sitting on the couch, but it will always be far less nutritious and filling than the homecooked meal you’re more likely to serve your family at the dinner table.
Plus, convenience food takes away the social benefit of engaging together at the dinner table.
The whole family approach of the book involves including children in the cooking process to get them interested in the food you’re preparing and cooking. It also involves sitting at the dinner table together to model healthy eating behaviours. Kids are more likely to try a food or meal if they’ve been involved in the process and can see you eating it too!
Finally, what is the one piece of advice you hope every reader takes away from Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids?
At its best moments, being a parent is the greatest joy of all. It is a gift that the universe has given to you. The best way for you to return this gift is by being an example that steers your child towards a lifetime of positive health. It all starts in the family home!